io6 THE GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE 



wide ranges of phenomena by simple laws. There is 

 another point which undoubtedly deserves notice. Our 

 sense-impressions are indeed complex in their grouping, 

 but they come to us by very few and comparatively 

 simple channels, namely, through the organs of sense. 

 The simplicity of the scientific law may therefore be 

 partly conditioned by the simplicity of the modes in 

 which sense-impressions are received. 



The arguments of this section are, of course, very far 

 from conclusive. They are only meant to suggest the 

 possibility that the perceptive faculty may in itself de- 

 termine largely or in part the routine of our perceptions. 

 If this be true, it will seem less of a marvel that the co- 

 ordinated reflective faculty should be able to describe the 

 " outside universe " by comparatively simple formulae. 

 On the whole this seems a more scientific hypothesis than 

 those which make the routine' depend on supersensuous 

 entities, and which then — to account for the power of the 

 human reason to analyse nature — endow those entities 

 with reason akin to man's, thus postulating thought and 

 consciousness apart from the associated physical machinery 

 which alone justifies our inferring its existence. The 

 hypothesis we have discussed, unproven as it may be, 

 postulates reason no further than we may logically infer 

 it, and at the same time attempts to account for the 

 power of analysing the routine of the perceptions, which 

 is undoubtedly possessed by the human reflective faculty. 



^ 13. — TJie Mind as a Sorting- Machine 



It is not hard to imagine by extension of existing 

 machinery a great stone-sorting machine of such a char- 

 acter that, when a confused heap of stones was thrown in 

 pell-mell at one end, some sizes would be rejected, while 

 the remainder would come out at the other end of the 

 machine sifted and sorted according to their sizes. Thus 

 a person who solely regarded the final results of the 

 machine might consider that only stones of certain sizes 

 had any existence, and that such stones were always 



